The 100 Million Dollar Club 🤴

26 ventures have raised at least $100m in Africa since 2019, attracting almost half of all the funding raised on the continent in the past 5 years

The main factor responsible from the drop in funding numbers in Africa since the start of the so-called funding winter in mid-2022 is the drying out of the ‘mega deal’ ($100m+) pipe. In 2023, only four start-ups raised more than $100m. In comparison, there were 9 in 2022, and 11 in 2021. In 2024, only one has crossed the $100m mark in funding raised this year so far: moove.

This week we’re having a closer look at ‘The 100 Million Dollar Club’, i.e. start-ups that have raised (in equity or debt) more than $100 million in the past 5 years (i.e. since 2019). Combined, these 26 ventures have attracted $6.9 billion in funding i.e. 46% of all the money invested in start-ups on the continent in the period. Most of it was raised in the form of equity ($5.4b, 44% of all the equity raised by start-ups in Africa since 2019), and the rest as debt ($1.5b, 60% of the total). The debt amount might actually be underestimated as start-ups were sometimes reluctant to disclose debt deals until fairly recently.

While we focus on equity and debt for consistency’s sake, two ventures deserve a special mention. First and foremost InstaDeep who was acquired by BioNTech in mid-2023 for approximately half a billion euros (after raising $100m in January that year), making it one of the best success stories of the past 5 years on the continent. Swvl also made the news in early 2022 by riding the PIPE wave and combining its business with special purpose acquisition company Queen’s Gambit Growth Capital.

As they raise and grow, it can become harder to tag these ventures to one vertical, or sometimes even to know exactly what country should count as their ‘HQ’. That said, what is clear is that more than half of the funding ($3.7b) has gone to Fintech ventures, followed by Energy start-ups ($1.3b). Combined, they attracted three quarters of the funding raised by this exclusive group. In terms of HQ location, Nigeria is in the lead ($2.3b), followed by Kenya. It is safe to say that 80-90% of the funding raised by this group went to ventures we can consider are HQ’ed in one of the Big Four.

Sadly - yet unsurprisingly - this 100 Million Dollar Club is really more of a 100 Million Dollar Boy’s Club. Indeed, 91% of the funding raised by the group has gone to start-ups with an all-male funding team ($5.4b, 79%) or a single male founder ($800m, 12%). The rest ($600m, 9%) went to ventures with gender-diverse funding teams: Andela, InstaDeep, Gro Intelligence and Copia Global. While Gro Intelligence’s funding was raised at a time when Sarah Menker was CEO, her recent replacement by James Cariello means that every single one of the 26 start-ups that have raised $100m or more since 2019 in Africa is currently led by a male CEO…

Want to dig into the numbers? Check out our database that now includes more than 3,000 individual deals and is arguably the most complete and up-to-date dataset on start-up investments in Africa. You can receive an update every first day of the month for as little as $11 a month if you use this discount code. I think that’s what we call a steal! See you next week for a look at the April numbers :) Ciao, Max